


there's a burning (going through the air)

by opaldawn



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, First Meeting, Flirting, Knife fights, Meet-Cute, Thievery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29446782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opaldawn/pseuds/opaldawn
Summary: "That's what I'd like to find out. Perhaps we could find somewhere to sit down, get to know each other a bit better?" Buddy raises one eyebrow, lets her tone turn up near the end, dangerously flirtatious, and Vespa can't help but think back to when they'd been sitting at the bar, to the things Buddy had said to her (her cheeks light up like a neon sign as she remembers, and she's thankful again for the cover of dusk). She'd be a fool to fall for the same dumb grift more than once. It would be stupid.She'll just have to keep a closer eye on the wallet this time.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19
Collections: TPP Valentine's Exchange, The Penumbra Podcast Femslash February 2021!





	there's a burning (going through the air)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entropyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entropyre/gifts).



> happy valentines day, jeannette!! i saw your prompt 'buddy and vespa meet cute' and blacked out and wrote 4500 words about vespa starting to learn how to be in love. so glad to have gotten your prompt list and to have been a part of this amazing event!!
> 
> content warnings for: knife fighting and the injury and blood it entails, and a brief and extremely minor reference to deadnaming/transphobia but nothing pictured. other than that its really very fluffy. i hope you (and anyone else reading) like it!! 
> 
> worlds biggest thanks to em for bullying me into working on this and then being so sweet about it. love you em

The redhead fights just like she flirts, which is to say she's quick on her feet, distractingly pretty, and deadly. Fortunately, Vespa isn't bad herself— she's got her favorite knife bared, and is keeping the other thief, who's armed with two smaller but scarily sharp daggers, at bay pretty handily. The alleyway is dark, which is a point in Vespa's favor, because not only is she trained at fighting in the permanent Rangian dusk, it's keeping her from losing her focus in the eyes of the other girl. 

The girl swipes one of her knives in the direction of her head, and she just barely dodges, the point of the knife grazing her cheek. Ignoring the sting of the cool air against the cut, Vespa pushes her arm away, unbalancing her, then drives her own knife towards her, aiming straight at her heart. 

It could've been a perfect strike. All things considered, it should've been. She's done this a hundred times, hasn't let anyone get the better of her, not since the day she left her home planet. But. 

But something's different here. Not that she isn't still fighting for her life or whatever. Not that she doesn't want to prove that some second-rate pickpocket can't beat her in a fight. But something about the look in the redhead's eyes, an amused glint turning to startled recognition as she stumbles, reflecting two of the moons and the neon lights of the city... 

Vespa freezes her hand just as the tip of the knife's about to sink into the girl's chest. She tries to play it off as a momentary misstep as she moves her arm just a little, the blade cutting into her shirtsleeve instead of her heart, but she's not as good an actor as she is a fighter. She goes to say something, or maybe take another less-lethal strike, when she hears a high whistling sound next to her ear and jerks her head to the side just fast enough to avoid the dagger hurtling towards her. The next one comes flying at her from the other side, predictably enough, and she ducks under it as well. 

And then the girl who's got her next three months worth of creds tucked into her pocket is weaponless, and Vespa can't help but wonder why. She knows, despite what ancient tacticians might say, that the heat of a fight is the worst place to be considering someone else's deepest motivations. But the redhead was clearly a decent enough fighter to know how  _ dumb  _ it was to throw away both her knives. 

Well. She's not gonna look a gift gigahorse in the mouth, she decides, bringing her arm up for one final strike against the girl. If she gets her just where her arm meets her shoulder, she thinks, that should scare her off while hopefully not  _ killing  _ her off. She's just steeling herself to strike when-

when the girl starts  _ laughing.  _

God. The sound of her laugh is… listen, Vespa's not a romantic or anything, okay? But for a second she sees where all those old poets are coming from, because when the girl laughs it's like the alley gets a little brighter and the cut on her head hurts a little less and the world gets a little less cold. And then she realizes it's not just  _ beautiful,  _ or whatever. It's  _ familiar,  _ and in a flash of deja vu that knocks her off balance, she knows why the redhead looked so familiar. 

The memories hitting her, of a cold concrete floor and a day that could've been the end of her world and a blue dress, a brilliant silhouette against a prison hall, have her so in her own head that she's startled when she feels a hand on her arm. The girl, she realizes, could've gotten her just then, could've grabbed her knife and cut her throat and left her against the wall, no harm done. But instead she's slowly guiding Vespa's arm down, down, her hand so warm against Vespa's wrist. 

"Well," she says with a grin so smug that Vespa has to take a second to make sure she hasn't stolen anything else from her (except a little bit of her dignity), "we seem to be doing all right for ourselves solo, but don't you think we'd be better as a pair?"

And… goddamn it, some long-buried feeling in Vespa's chest is screaming at her to say yes, to let the redhead take her on whatever grand adventure she's got planned. She's trusted her once, hasn't she, and that turned out pretty well, seeing as she's not currently rotting in some prison-labor camp. And the look in the girl's eyes, so genuine, like she wants nothing more than Vespa by her side… isn't bad, either. Not bad at all. 

But  _ trust  _ isn't an easy concept for her. Never has been, not since the stinking swamps of  _ that  _ planet, and she hasn't seen anything to convince her to change her mind on the topic since. So she pulls her arm away, tries to meet the girl's gaze. 

"How about giving me back the shit you stole, huh," she growls, "and then we'll talk." 

"Of course," the other acquiesces, and hands the high-tech wallet back to Vespa. She half-expects to see it empty when she opens it, but no, there's the ambassador's bank card and most of the creds she remembers, too. Her eyes narrow. 

"Why?" she can't help but ask. The girl doesn't fight like someone willing to give up too easily, and the things she'd said back in the bar… well, Vespa's pretty sure she's been around the block. So then— 

"Why what, darling?" (Ooh.  _ Darling.  _ She pushes aside the thought of how nice that sounds, how much she'd do to hear it again.)

"Why  _ me? _ " Her grip on the knife tightens instinctively as she speaks. "You could've kept the cash and ran, hell, you could've killed me a whole lotta times just now. And if it was an easy score you were looking for, you could've gone after someone with a whole lot fewer knives and a whole lot more money to spare. So— why?" 

There's more she wants to say, too.  _ Why try to work with me? Why free all the people in that prison?  _ But the words stick on her tongue as the redhead laughs again. 

"I'm afraid the answer is rather embarrassing," she grins. 

"Hit me," Vespa says. "Can't be more embarrassing than throwing your knives away in the middle of a fight, can it?" 

"You wound me," the other girl deadpans. "But would you believe me if I said that I just wanted an excuse to talk to you? That I walked into that bar expecting no more than a stiff drink to take my mind off a recent job, and found something… far more distracting?" She lets her hand on Vespa's wrist trail up her arm, and Vespa at least has the good sense to make sure that she's still got that wallet.  _ Fool me twice, shame on me, _ and all that. 

Still. She's… floored, a little bit. Because if the redhead's pulling some kind of long con, there's no reason for her to have given everything back, for her to have lost the knife fight (on purpose, Vespa wonders?). No reason for her to be looking at her like that, all genuine and eyebrows-raised and pretty enough to make Vespa's stomach do gymnastics.

"So… you were trying to flirt with me? And you just  _ accidentally _ stole my wallet?" She tries not to sound  _ too _ excited by the idea. 

“Call it muscle memory,” the girl says lightly. “Now. What do you say about my proposition?”

“Your— oh, yeah,” Vespa remembers. A part of her wants to turn tail and run, to write the encounter off as an awkward attempt at a pickpocketing gone wrong. Why would someone like this, someone with a smile that could freeze a hyperspace train in its tracks and more creds worth of jewelry hanging from her neck than Vespa’s ever had at one time in her life and long red nails matching the perfectly-styled ringlets framing her face and a laugh like, fine, like wedding bells, even look twice at Vespa? There’s gotta be a catch.

Another, louder part of her reminds her of how nice it sounded when the girl called her “darling.”

“Fine,” she says, rolling her eyes like it means less than nothing to her. “A pair, huh? What’ve you got in mind for the two of us to do?”

“Believe me, doll,” the redhead says, “I can think of  _ plenty _ of things the two of us could do.” She grins lopsidedly, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “But let’s start from the beginning, shall we. I don’t think I caught your name?”

“What?” says Vespa once she picks her jaw up from the ground and her mind out from the gutter. 

The girl looks amused. “You have got one, haven’t you?”

“Oh. Right. I’m, um. I’m Vespa?” 

She  _ hates _ the way her voice turns up at the end, suddenly reconsidering the plan of bolting out of the alley and off-planet.  _ Shit, _ she realizes, it’s the first time she’s given that name to anyone. All the days of practicing it in front of the mirror in the dead of night haven’t done much at all for her confidence.

At the same time, though… she can’t deny it’s a weight off her shoulders. If she dies tomorrow, there’ll be someone else in the world who knows her as— 

“Vespa,” the redhead repeats. “What a lovely name. It suits you.”

She lets out a breath she’d barely realized she’d been holding. “Hah. Thanks, I guess. And you?”

"Forgive me for forgetting my manners." The girl laughs again, and Vespa wonders whether she can hear the way her heartbeat speeds up, the two of them so close and all. "You can call me 'buddy'."

Which. Huh. Okay. So maybe Vespa'd been misinterpreting something about the whole situation. Maybe the girl's flirting had only been a means to an end, and she really was just looking for a… partner in crime, or something. Maybe she's some… some heiress, or serial killer, and doesn't want Vespa to see the skeletons in her closet unlocked by a key with her name on it.

She doesn't want to press, she really doesn't. But, come on. She'd given Buddy hers, even after being pickpocketed, and it all rings a little unfair. "So if I do end up working with you, do I get to know your name?" 

For the first time, even counting that first moment when Vespa had the knife against her throat, the redhead looks something other than perfectly composed. She makes a confused sound. "Darling, I just told you." 

"You just— what?" Vespa feels like she's missed a step or two on the stairs.

"Buddy Aurinko, at your service." She brings Vespa's hand— the one still with the knife in it, goddamnit— up to her lips, and presses a kiss to her knuckles. 

Vespa freezes up like one of those living statues they've got on that one gambling moon of Saturn. The girl's lips— Buddy Aurinko's lips— are warm and impossibly soft. Her hair brushes against Vespa's arm as she dips her head, and when she pulls back, Vespa sees she's left a lipstick mark against her skin. 

Somewhere in her hopelessly blown mind, she manages to figure out exactly the wrong thing to say to Buddy's introduction. "I saw you on a wanted poster on Eris! You shot some CEO!"

"Ah," Buddy says, a little surprised. Vespa can't tell, but she hopes she doesn't detect an upset note in her tone. "Yes, well, it seems as though the strife and discord of the lovely exoplanet rubbed off on me when I was vacationing there. Of course, you know I'll have to categorically deny everything— it was all a huge mixup, I promise, I'm told I have the kind of face easily mistaken for another—"

"Bullshit," Vespa shakes her head. "You don't have to sugarcoat. Not like the Ambassador’s wallet found its way into my pocket by accident… and maybe I like a girl who gets her hands a little dirty."

"Well," says Buddy Aurinko. "We might have more in common than I thought, then."

"Oh, yeah?" Vespa doesn't see the resemblance, herself. Buddy's a good eight inches taller than her, dressed up like a stream starlet even counting the slice in her bodice framing the shallow cut on her chest, with eyes as dark as the night and as bright as the sun and about as hard to look away from as the night sky with all its stars. Vespa's… well, having seen herself, she's nothing to wax poetic about. "How's that?"

"That's what I'd like to find out. Perhaps we could find somewhere to sit down, get to know each other a bit better?" She raises one eyebrow, lets her tone turn up near the end, dangerously flirtatious, and Vespa can't help but think back to when they'd been sitting at the bar, to the things Buddy had said to her (her cheeks light up like a neon sign as she remembers, and she's thankful again for the cover of dusk). She'd be a fool to fall for the same dumb grift more than once. It would be  _ stupid.  _

She'll just have to keep a closer eye on the wallet. 

"Fine," she says, hoping her tone doesn't betray her interest in where the night might go.

"Don't sound too excited about it," Buddy tells her, amused, and Vespa can't puzzle out whether that means she succeeded or failed miserably. Then she finally takes her hand off Vespa's wrist. "You look cold."

"Guess so." Vespa shrugs. She's not wrong, honestly. Pluto's cold as  _ hell,  _ and she hadn't been planning on hanging out on the streets in the middle of the night. "You know anywhere close to here where I can forget we're four billion miles from the Sun?"

"I can think of a place or two," she says. "I doubt the bar will be thrilled to see the two of us again, though."

"Why's that?"

Buddy laughs. "I'm ashamed to say I paid for your drinks with counterfeit creds. I hadn't been planning on it, I hate to hurt an innocent establishment like that, but I can't help the occasional act of kindness sometimes."

" _ Kindness—  _ you mean getting me drunk so you could get your hand in my pants and then ditching me at the bar?"

"You know, when you put it that way," Buddy muses, "it does sound worse than I'd intended." She turns her head away from Vespa, breaking eye contact, and Vespa wonders for a second, wildly, whether her guilty conscience has gotten the better of her and she's planning on leaving. But then she sees her slipping off her coat, one arm at a time. She holds it out to Vespa with an encouraging look—  _ go on, then. _

"Uh," Vespa says articulately. "What?"

"You were right that I've hardly been the most gallant tonight, darling. I stole your score, I gave you a nasty cut—" Buddy's hand is on her face before she can even think to flinch away from it, the pad of her thumb tracing the scrape on Vespa's face— "and a lovely girl like you doesn't deserve any of that. You're cold. Take my jacket."

"God," Vespa mutters, "how many old movies do you watch?" But she can't help the stupid smile on her face as she pulls the jacket over her shoulders (a little too large, and perfectly warm, and it smells like Buddy's perfume, she notes silently). 

Buddy grins, too, and Vespa's heart flutters in her chest. "Well," she says, gesturing broadly out to the street, "shall we?"

"Aren't you gonna, I dunno, offer me your arm or something? Get your hand on my waist?" 

"What a terrible oversight on my part." Buddy holds out her hand, and Vespa takes it, hoping Buddy can't feel the sweat on her palm or the racing of her heartbeat. "Tell me, Vespa. Do you have a place to stay the night?"

The question's innocuous enough that Vespa has to take a few precious seconds to puzzle over whether it's meant as a prelude to an invitation, and then a few more to figure out how she'd feel about it if it  _ was.  _ God, it's not like she doesn't  _ want  _ to stay over at Buddy's place, whatever that might entail. She can't deny that flirting with her has been the most fun she's had since… she can't think of anything else, actually, which is a little pathetic for sure. 

But she knows well enough that  _ fun  _ and  _ beautiful  _ and  _ dazzling  _ and all that stuff doesn't add up to anything even remotely shaped like  _ trust,  _ and she doesn't want to wake up with a knife in her back. 

"I have an early flight tomorrow morning?" Her voice turns up at the end. She'd been planning on zoning out at the bar for a couple more hours, then hanging around the spaceport until her flight at six. Renting a room would have been a liability— what if there were cameras, what if her fake account got declined— and plus, she didn't mind sleeping on the flight. 

Right now, though, with the post-fight adrenaline fading slowly and Buddy's coat soft and warm around her, she can't think of many things in the world that she'd like more than to lie down in a bed, or, hell, anywhere soft, and sleep for a couple hours. 

"You sound awfully uncertain about it," Buddy grins. "Really, darling, is my company so terrible that you need to get off-planet so soon?"

Vespa snorts. "Yeah, actually, I'd love to stick around and get caught and killed by the Venusian Ambassador's goons as soon as he finds a way to make a phone call without his wallet or comms, but then I'd have to—" She cuts herself off involuntarily with a yawn, and when she opens her eyes again, she catches the tail end of a glance from Buddy that's so fond it makes her head spin. 

"Well," Buddy says, "if you think you could stand being around me for another few hours, I've got a place you could stay until your flight. Unless you'd prefer if I walk you to the spaceport— I've heard the ground there is first-class for sleeping on." 

"I, uh— thanks," Vespa stammers out, hurrying to keep up with Buddy as she starts walking. Well, she tells herself, if she's gonna wake up with a knife in her back, she guesses she'd rather it be one of the ones she's already acquainted with than one belonging to some mugger at the spaceport. Buddy seems like the type of girl to keep her knives clean, at least.

They walk most of the way back to Buddy's apartment in silence, Vespa acutely aware of their joined hands and the way that Buddy keeps casting these… searching looks at her. There's something about her that cuts through the bitter cold of the Plutonian winter and the swirling vortex of Vespa's thoughts and warms her from the inside out. Something Vespa doesn't want to name, not just yet; something she's content to just enjoy for a while. To remember, maybe, for next time she's wondering whether the loneliness of a life as a thief is worth it. 

"Ah," Buddy breathes out as she opens the door to the apartment (unlocked, Vespa notes, which strikes her as strange— nothing she's noticed so far about Buddy really screams  _ naive _ in that way). "Home sweet home."

"Okay," Vespa says, taking in the sight of plush furniture and expensive paintings and brocade, "so either you've got a side job, or everyone who's told me crime doesn't pay has been dead wrong." She kicks off her boots at the door, following Buddy's lead and more than a little anxious about the dirt on the soles, and sidesteps a rug that she bets cost about as much as the whole of her village on Ranga's life savings' combined. 

"You flatter me, darling," Buddy laughs. "This isn't  _ my  _ apartment. The couple who usually lives here is away checking the conditions of their uranium mines, and I am, shall we say, renting the place for an extraordinarily low fee."

"Zero creds a month?" Vespa heads into the living room and sits down heavily on a velvet couch, putting her feet up on a coffee table that's floating a couple inches off the ground. Somehow, knowing the place isn't Buddy's makes her feel a little less self-conscious, more like they're meeting on neutral ground. 

"Zero creds a  _ week,  _ in fact," Buddy grins at her as she makes her way to the kitchen. "I'm heading off-planet in several days myself."

"Hm," Vespa says noncommittally. Something about the idea of Buddy leaving stings in a way she knows it really shouldn't, almost as bad as the cut on her cheek— which, oh, right, she should probably take care of. "You know where the bathroom is? I don't wanna bleed on anything that costs more than a hundred thousand creds."

"First door to the left," Buddy tells her, pouring herself a glass of some brightly-colored liquor. "But let me help you with that."

"I got it, I got it," Vespa waves her off. "Lots of practice fixing myself up." She starts walking down the hallway, and hears Buddy's footsteps just behind her. 

"What if I told you I'm feeling terribly guilty about what I've done to such a pretty face, and that the only thing that could assuage my bloodstained conscience would be to clean up the wound I gave you?" Buddy's tone is so playfully simpering that Vespa can't help but laugh, and imagines Buddy's satisfied smile.

"What, does the scar look that bad?" The bathroom is just as lavish as the rest of the place, and she roots around in the medicine cabinet for a bit before coming up with some antiseptic ointment. Looking at herself in the mirror, she determines that it's not bad enough to need stitches, which she's thankful for. She's too tired to deal with either having to use one of those godawful machines on herself, or having Buddy's hands on her face for that long. 

"I imagine once it's cleaned up it'll be rather striking. Let me do that for you, darling, your hands are shaking." She takes the tube of antiseptic from Vespa's hands, and as she's finding a washcloth from who-knows-where, Vespa curses her own exhaustion. She's pulled all-nighters before, been in much more physically taxing fights. Why the hell she's so tired right now, she just can't understand.

Buddy's hand comes up, cradles her cheek so gently, and Vespa can feel every ridge of her fingertips, every line of her palm. Her breath catches, and Buddy meets her eyes with a look so intense that Vespa has to break eye contact so she doesn't spontaneously combust. She hardly flinches as Buddy presses the dampened washcloth against the cut, barely even gasps as she wipes the blood off and dabs on the ointment with the pad of her thumb. 

"Thanks," she says once Buddy's deemed the wound satisfactorily treated. "Hope you can still stand to look at me after this heals up."

"Oh, Vespa, I hardly think you have to worry about that," Buddy says with a little smile. And there's not much Vespa can do but match it with a smile of her own. How can she, met by the full force of Buddy Aurinko looking at her so sweetly that it scares her? 

"So, uh. Should I, um— is there a guest room, or something?" She shifts anxiously from side to side as she waits for Buddy's answer. 

"Only a fold-out couch," Buddy tells her. "Which I'm certain is as lavish as anything else here, though I can't say I've tried it. But you're more than welcome to share with me, if you'd like. You can slit my throat if I wake you up snoring." And— is it Vespa's imagination, or does Buddy look… almost as nervous as she herself feels? 

"That sounds nice," she mutters, looking away. "I. Thanks." 

Buddy lets her hand linger on Vespa's cheek for a second longer before pulling away. "I'll leave you to wash up, then, darling? You can borrow a pair of my pajamas, if you'd like."

"Yeah," Vespa says again, trying to keep her eyes open. "Really, uh— thanks, Buddy. I mean it. This is… this is nice."

"I could say just the same." Buddy meets her eyes one last time, and then slips out the bathroom door.

A warm shower (for the first time in what's probably a month), a pair of Buddy's too-large pajamas, and two pills dry-swallowed later, she goes to find Buddy, who's aimlessly scrolling on her comms. With her hair up in a silk bonnet, face washed clean of makeup and concealer, and the tired, open smile she's baring, Vespa thinks for the first time she gets a glimpse behind the glamor and showiness of Buddy Aurinko.

She's enjoyed their meeting up until now, that's for sure, but, she thinks, she'd like to see her like this more often.

As soon as the thought crosses her mind, she pushes it away. Not like Buddy's intentions are unclear at this point, but she doesn't want to fall too fast. Part of her still feels like she doesn't deserve the full force of Buddy's affection.

She doesn't voice any of this, though, just stands in the doorway for a few seconds looking at Buddy before climbing into bed next to her and getting under the sheets. It's so much nicer than the economy-class bunk seats and motel-pod mattresses that have been her go-to pretty much ever since leaving Ranga, and she feels herself starting to drift off pretty much as soon as her head hits the pillow.

"Good night, Vespa," she hears Buddy say. God, if she was right to be distrustful, if she doesn't wake up the next morning, she'd be fine with Buddy's voice being the last thing she ever hears.

But on the other hand, she wants to wake up next to Buddy Aurinko the next morning. To see how she takes her coffee, and maybe reschedule her flight off planet, and see what the future holds for the two of them. She feels  _ safe  _ here, she realizes, safe enough to let down her guard a little, to quiet the part of her mind telling her she doesn't deserve something like this. Safe with Buddy softly breathing next to her, inches away, not quite touching but close enough she can feel the warmth radiating off of her.

Where are they going after tonight, the two of them? What does Buddy see in her that Vespa can hardly find in herself? Can she even trust anything that the redhead says? (She wants to, so badly, in a way she's never wanted to trust anyone before.)

"Night, Bud," she says. She'll figure it out in the morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the motion picture managers by evil arrows. comments and kudos make my day <3


End file.
